The Associated PressOregon assistant coach Maurica Powell, center, holds the national championship trophy as the team celebrates winning the team competition at the NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championship.FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. _ Oregon's women's team started fast, finished strong and won the national title going away at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships Saturday in the Randal Tyson Track Complex.

The Ducks wrapped up their first-ever indoor championship emphatically by winning the women's 4x400 relay, the meet's last event, and finished with 61 points. Tennessee was second with 36.

"I think we proved we have sprinters at Oregon," said Amber Purvis, who held off LaTavia Thomas of LSU in a gutty last 100 meters of the anchor leg to finish in 3 minutes 32.97 seconds, an indoor school record.

Actually, the Ducks have a little of everything. They started the day with Brianne Theisen's victory in the pentathlon with a school-record, 4,396 points, then followed with second-place finishes by Keshia Baker in the 400 and Melissa Gergel in the pole vault.

The performances by Baker and Gergel upset most form charts and were indoor school records of 14-7 1/4 and 51.63 seconds respectively.

It was a bravura show, virtually across the board.

The men's team got the day's highlight performance, when Ashton Eaton broke Dan O'Brien's 17-year-old world record in the indoor heptathlon with a stunning mark of 6,499. O'Brien, one of the top multi-eventers in history, had held the record with a total of 6,476.

Eaton now is in exclusive company. The Ducks also picked up a second-place finish from Andrew Wheating in the 800 and a 2-4 finish from freshman Mac Fleet and senior A.J. Acosta in the mile to tie Texas A&M for second place with 44 points. Florida won the men's title with 57 points.

Wheating, a 2008 Olympian, was a little embarrassed afterward that Virginia freshman Robby Andrews caught him at the finish line. Andrews' winning time was 1:48.39. Wheating finished in 1:48.40.

"I forgot a few cardinal rules," Wheating said. "You have to pound that last 50. You always have to do it. When I got in the lead, I felt real comfortable. Too comfortable."

UO assistant Andy Powell, in charge of the men's team with head coach Vin Lananna back in Eugene dealing with high blood pressure, thought Wheating's brilliant anchor leg of Oregon's winning distance medley relay on Friday probably took something out of him.

"Coming back and scoring eight points in the 800 gave us valuable team points when we needed them," Powell said. "He gave us 18 points."

The Oregon women, meanwhile, took care of business after a disappointing first day in which Nicole Blood fell and failed to finish the 5,000 and Jamesha Youngblood didn't get out of the long jump preliminaries.

"Their spirits started getting down," said UO assistant Robert Johnson, who had charge of the women's team. "I said, 'Look, you have to stop that getting down and quit throwing the pity party. We're definitely still in this thing. As long as you guys rally around one another we can still get it done.'"

The message got through. Theisen opened the day by breaking her school record in the pentathlon by 75 points. Theisen had a huge personal record with a shot put of 41-6, and made her only legal long jump count, with a pentathlon PR of 19-11 1/2.

Theisen said she was distracted by Eaton's progress toward his world record, which contributed to her two fouls in the long jump.

"But I also think it helped," she said. "Because I was so excited for him that I jumped the 'pent' PR. Coach (Harry) Marra said I was a foot behind the board. That would have been huge."

It was big enough as it was for Marra, the UO multi-events coach, who is having a memorable first season on the UO staff. And it jump-started the Ducks.

Gergel had missed two of her three allowable attempts at 14-3 1/4 before she switched to a bigger pole, one she had never used.

"That was a new pole," she said. "I had it shipped right here. I would have been in trouble if we hadn't made that last-minute order. It was the right move."

Gergel then cleared her next two heights, before missing at 14-9. She then went for the victory by passing her final two attempts at that height, to join eventual champ Kylie Hutson at 14-9.

Her two missed that height eliminated her from the competition, and Gergel had to settle for obliterating the school record of 14-3 1/4 that Becky Holliday set in 2003.

Baker was in the slow section of the 400 final, which was contested in two sections and seeded by the runners' preliminary times. At first, she wasn't happy about it. But the more she turned it over in her mind, the more she thought it might be an advantage.

She said she decided the slower section "might be less congested than the first section. It turned out to be great."

She rocketed to the front and won by a second-and-half. Only one runner in the "fast" section was faster, Francena McCorory, who set a U.S. indoor record with a winning time of 50.54.

As it turns out, even Blood and Youngblood got in on the action. Blood finished fifth in the 3,000 and Youngblood had a leg on the 4x400.

"We're very versatile," Baker said. "We have everything you need to win a championship, and we proved it today."